O’Neill and Buckley relieved to get past winning post
DR Crokes selector Harry O’Neill got what he came for and got what he expected. He came for the Andy Merrigan Cup and expected a damn tough battle to get it. O’Neill does the talking for the Dr Crokes management. Team manager Pat O’Shea opted to stay away from media engagements in favour of focusing solely on the managing of the football team and related matters. O’Shea designated O’Neill to deal with the press, which he has done throughout the county, provincial and All-Ireland phases of this epic journey with grace and humour and honesty.
On Friday evening, a little before 7pm, O’Neill faced the media one last time - at least until the county league starts for Crokes next week - and tried to put words and sounds on the what Dr Crokes had just achieved.
“A great feeling,” he puffed, almost unsure if the game was over and the day was won. “That was a tough battle out there today, we knew it was going to be. The lads showed a lot of character, they had to dig in very, very deep, even though Slaughtneil went down to fourteen men for the entire second half. We knew that was the calibre of the team we were going to come up against and we knew we’d have to fight to the bitter end to win that game.
“I think the fact we went four points down midway through the first half, and Slaughtneil are the experts in holding on to that sort of stuff and I think we picked up there. We probably didn’t get a great start but in fairness we got a goal, and a point. Daithi (Casey) made a great run through the middle, slipped it to Colm (Cooper) and he got the goal and I think (Casey) kicked a great point after that himself. That got us back into the game and gave us something tom play for. I think we just showed a lot of character after that,” O’Neill said.
“It was a grind, it was hard work. They worked hard but thankfully our lads worked hard too. I wouldn’t say it was (a) defensive (second half). We were playing against Slaughtneil who play man for man and that’s the way we try to play as well. It’s just the way the game...they hold on to the ball so what happens is (our) players get behind the ball and it looks defensive but it’s put in there. It’s just the way the game develops.
“Brendan Rogers wants to gallop up the field and that’s what he did today. They were going man to man, and we were going man to man so we had to man up today and mark our men. We want to be on the ball and keep them up the other end of the field and when they had it they wanted to do something very similar so that’s the way the game panned out. I don’t think either team went defensive but when you’re going man to man that’s they way it can work out,” O’Neill said in trying to explain the endgame that saw Crokes recycle the ball and retain possession.
“(At half time) we picked through the good stuff we did and the bad stuff. You want to eradicate the bad stuff and keep working on the good stuff, and obviously we were going to have a spare man and we just wanted to make sure we were going to utilise that and protect ourselves as well. It was how we were going to manage the game in the second half. We had our noses in front (we wanted) to keep them in front and manage the game and that’s what we did.”
Beside O’Neill sat the team captain. Twenty-five years ago Johnny Buckley went up the steps of the Hogan Stand on his father Mike’s shoulders after the later won his All-Ireland Club medal.
A quarter of a century on Johnny walked the same route to accept the Andy Merrigan Cup on behalf of the Crokes club for a second time.
“For 25 years, we’ve tried to come back up those steps,” Buckley told the Crokes faithful from the podium. “We’ve had a lot of disappointments but I’m here to say that the Andy Merrigan Cup is coming back to Killarney.”
In the press room Buckley reflected on the game.
“It was a very demanding game. It was very much man for man so there was a lot of tracking back, a lot of hard work out there. Playing the game against fourteen men, I suppose playing with fourteen men gives you a certain amount of freedom and they played with that in the second half so we had to work hard out there and make sure we were solid at the back and there was no man slipping through unmarked,” he said. “There’s always a certain anxiousness at the start of an All-Ireland final and it just took us a while to settle into the game and we were a bit open at the back early on, but in fairness to the boys back there they put the head down and shut up shop and didn’t give away too many scores after we gave away that goal. “It was just the way the game panned out towards the end of the game. In fairness to them they put in a massive shift for the whole game and we saw that maybe the (Slaughtneil) bodies were tiring a little bit and we had that extra man. I know a two-point lead is a bit dangerous but it’s just the way it panned out. We had that bit of space around the middle and you’re more likely to hold onto possession in that part of the field because they had a lot of men back at that stage. It wasn’t a tactic we went out with or anything it was just that fellas realised that there was a bit of space out around the middle so we were able to get it through the hands. In fairness to the lads who came on they gave us that bit of energy and legs to hold on to the ball.
“This has been a fifteen-month journey that we’ve been on and there’s no doubt about it those semi-final defeats were hard pills to swallow. And there’s a lot of lads who played here ten years ago. There’s been a lot of disappointment over the years and it was definitely a motivational factor. Personally among the players it was mentioned from time to time but every fella had their own agenda.”